A long and illustrious history

The first people in Britain were Stone Age hunter-gatherers who could walk across a land bridge from the continent. Britain only became an island, cut off by the Channel, about 10,000 years ago. The first farmers arrived about 6,000 years ago, probably from south-east Europe, and built houses, tombs and monuments such as Stonehenge in Wiltshire. Skara Brae on Orkney is the best-preserved prehistoric village in northern Europe.

About 4,000 years ago people learned to make bronze. Bronze Age people lived in roundhouses, buried their dead in round barrows and made fine objects in bronze and gold. In the Iron Age people made iron tools and weapons, lived in larger settlements and built hill forts — Maiden Castle in Dorset is a famous example. They spoke Celtic languages and made the first coins minted in Britain, which marks the start of British history.

Julius Caesar led a Roman invasion in 55 BC, but it failed. In AD 43 the Emperor Claudius invaded again and, despite resistance from some British tribes, the Romans took control of almost all of Britain. Boudicca, queen of the Iceni in what is now eastern England, fought against them; her statue stands on Westminster Bridge near the Houses of Parliament.

The Romans never conquered what is now Scotland. Emperor Hadrian built a wall across the north of England to keep out the Picts, the ancestors of the Scottish people. Parts of Hadrian's Wall, including the forts of Housesteads and Vindolanda, survive and are a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The Romans stayed for about 400 years, building roads and public buildings, creating a structure of law and bringing new plants and animals. The first Christian communities appeared in the 3rd and 4th centuries AD.

The Roman army left in AD 410 and never returned. Tribes from northern Europe — the Jutes, Angles and Saxons — then invaded, and their languages became the basis of modern English. By about AD 600 Anglo-Saxon kingdoms covered much of what is now England. A king was buried with treasure and armour in a ship at Sutton Hoo in Suffolk. Wales and Scotland largely stayed free of Anglo-Saxon rule.

Missionaries spread Christianity: St Patrick (later patron saint of Ireland) and St Columba, who founded a monastery on Iona, worked in the north; St Augustine came from Rome to the south and became the first Archbishop of Canterbury. The Vikings, from Denmark and Norway, first raided in AD 789 and later settled. Alfred the Great united the English kingdoms and defeated them, but many Vikings stayed in the Danelaw in the east and north — place names like Grimsby and Scunthorpe come from their languages. England later had Danish kings, the first being Cnut (Canute). In the north, the Viking threat led people to unite under Kenneth MacAlpin, and the name Scotland came into use.

In 1066 William, Duke of Normandy (in what is now northern France), invaded and defeated the Saxon king Harold at the Battle of Hastings. Harold was killed and William became king, known as William the Conqueror. The battle is shown on the Bayeux Tapestry, a huge embroidery that can still be seen in France.

This was the last successful foreign invasion of England and it changed government and society. Norman French, the language of the new rulers, shaped the development of English. The Normans also conquered Wales for a time, though the Welsh gradually won land back, and they fought the Scots on the border but did not invade Scotland. William ordered a survey of every town and village, its people, land and animals — the Domesday Book, which still exists.

The Middle Ages (medieval period) run from the Norman Conquest to about 1485, a time of almost constant war. In Wales the English established control: in 1284 Edward I's Statute of Rhuddlan annexed Wales to the English Crown, and great castles such as Conwy and Caernarvon were built. The last Welsh rebellions were defeated by the mid-15th century. Scotland was different — in 1314 Robert the Bruce defeated the English at Bannockburn and Scotland stayed unconquered. In Ireland the English ruled an area around Dublin called the Pale by 1200.

Abroad, many knights fought in the Crusades for control of the Holy Land, and England fought France in the Hundred Years War, which actually lasted 116 years. At Agincourt in 1415 Henry V's heavily outnumbered army beat the French; the English left France in the 1450s. At home the Normans used feudalism: the king gave land to lords in return for soldiers, and most peasants were serfs working their lord's land. In northern Scotland and Ireland land belonged to clans.

In 1348 the Black Death, probably a form of plague, killed about a third of the population of England, and a similar share in Scotland and Wales. With fewer people, less grain was needed and labour was short, so peasants demanded higher wages. New social classes appeared, including large landowners later called the gentry, people moved to towns, and a strong middle class grew.

In 1215 the noblemen forced King John to agree to the Magna Carta (Great Charter). It established that even the king was subject to the law, protected nobles' rights and limited the king's power to tax or change laws. Parliament grew from the king's council: the House of Lords held nobles, great landowners and bishops, while the House of Commons held knights and wealthy townspeople elected by a small part of the population. Scotland's parliament had three Estates — lords, commons and clergy. Judges began to be independent of government; in England they developed 'common law' through precedent, while Scottish law was codified (written down).

After 1066 the rulers spoke Norman French and the peasants Anglo-Saxon; gradually the two merged into one English language — 'park' and 'beauty' come from French, 'apple', 'cow' and 'summer' from Anglo-Saxon. By 1400 official documents in England were in English. Geoffrey Chaucer wrote The Canterbury Tales, poems about pilgrims telling stories on the way to Canterbury; it was one of the first books printed by William Caxton, the first person in England to use a printing press. In Scotland, Gaelic and Scots were spoken and John Barbour wrote The Bruce about Bannockburn. Castles (such as Windsor and Edinburgh, still in use) and cathedrals (such as Lincoln, and York Minster with its stained glass) were built, and English wool became a major export.

In 1455 the Wars of the Roses began between the House of Lancaster (red rose) and the House of York (white rose). They ended in 1485 at the Battle of Bosworth Field, where Richard III of York was killed. Henry Tudor of Lancaster became Henry VII, married Elizabeth of York and founded the House of Tudor, whose symbol is a red rose with a white rose inside.

Henry VII strengthened central government, reduced the nobles' power and built up the Crown's finances. His son Henry VIII is best known for breaking with the Church of Rome and marrying six times: Catherine of Aragon (mother of Mary), Anne Boleyn (mother of Elizabeth, executed), Jane Seymour (mother of Edward, died soon after), Anne of Cleves (divorced), Catherine Howard (executed) and Catherine Parr (outlived him). When the Pope refused his divorce, Henry set up the Church of England, with the king rather than the Pope appointing bishops. Meanwhile the Protestant Reformation spread across Europe. Under Henry VIII, the Act for the Government of Wales formally united Wales with England.

Edward VI, a strong Protestant, introduced the Book of Common Prayer and died aged 15. Mary, a devout Catholic, persecuted Protestants ('Bloody Mary'). Elizabeth I, a Protestant, re-established the Church of England, balanced Catholic and Protestant views, and became hugely popular after England defeated the Spanish Armada in 1588. In Scotland, Parliament abolished the Pope's authority in 1560 and a Protestant Church of Scotland (not a state Church) was formed. Mary, Queen of Scots, a Catholic, fled to England, gave her throne to her son James VI, and was later executed for plotting against Elizabeth I.

The Elizabethan period saw growing patriotism and exploration. Sir Francis Drake, one of the commanders who defeated the Spanish Armada, helped found England's naval tradition; his ship the Golden Hind was one of the first to sail around the world. English settlers began to colonise the east coast of America, and this grew in the next century.

The period is also remembered for poetry and drama, above all William Shakespeare (1564–1616). Born in Stratford-upon-Avon, he was a playwright and actor whose famous plays include A Midsummer Night's Dream, Hamlet, Macbeth and Romeo and Juliet. He was one of the first to portray ordinary English men and women and invented many words still used today. Lines still quoted include 'Once more unto the breach' (Henry V), 'To be or not to be' (Hamlet), 'A rose by any other name' (Romeo and Juliet), 'All the world's a stage' (As You Like It) and 'The darling buds of May' (Sonnet 18). The Globe Theatre in London is a modern copy of the theatres where his plays were first performed.

Elizabeth I had no children, so in 1603 her cousin James VI of Scotland became James I of England, Wales and Ireland (Scotland stayed a separate country). His reign produced the King James (Authorised) Version of the Bible. Ireland was almost entirely Catholic; after rebellions, Protestants from Scotland and England were encouraged to settle in Ulster on land taken from Catholics — the 'plantations', which had serious long-term consequences.

James I and his son Charles I believed in the Divine Right of Kings. Charles tried to rule without Parliament for 11 years, then tried to impose a new Prayer Book on the Presbyterian Church in Scotland, provoking a Scottish army. Parliament, full of Puritans, refused him money; when Charles entered the Commons to arrest five MPs (no monarch has entered it since), civil war began in 1642 between Cavaliers (royalists) and Roundheads (Parliament). The king lost at Marston Moor and Naseby and was executed in 1649. England became a republic, the Commonwealth. Oliver Cromwell crushed the revolt in Ireland (he is still controversial there) and defeated Charles II at Dunbar and Worcester — Charles escaped, famously hiding in an oak tree. Cromwell ruled as Lord Protector until he died in 1658; his son Richard could not hold power.

In 1660 Parliament invited Charles II back from exile in the Netherlands. He accepted that he must sometimes reach agreement with Parliament, and the Church of England again became the established Church. In 1665 plague struck London, and in 1666 the Great Fire destroyed much of the city, including St Paul's Cathedral; the new St Paul's was designed by Sir Christopher Wren, and Samuel Pepys described these events in his diary. The Habeas Corpus Act of 1679 ('you must present the person in court') guaranteed no one could be held prisoner unlawfully. Charles II founded the Royal Society, the oldest surviving scientific society, whose early members included Edmund Halley and Isaac Newton — Newton showed how gravity applies to the whole universe and that white light is made of the colours of the rainbow.

Charles's Catholic brother became James II and favoured Catholics. When his wife had a son, Protestants invited William of Orange, husband of James's Protestant daughter Mary, to take the throne. In 1688 William arrived without resistance and James fled — the 'Glorious Revolution', which guaranteed the power of Parliament. James invaded Ireland but lost to William at the Battle of the Boyne in 1690. In Scotland a rising for James was defeated at Killiecrankie, and the MacDonalds of Glencoe were massacred for being late to swear loyalty. James's supporters were called Jacobites.

The Bill of Rights of 1689 confirmed Parliament's rights and limited the monarch's power: the king could not raise taxes or administer justice without Parliament, the monarch had to be Protestant, and Parliament had to be elected regularly. This began 'constitutional monarchy' and party politics between the Whigs and the Tories (a name still used for the Conservatives). From 1695 newspapers no longer needed a government licence — the start of a free press. Voting was still limited to men with property; 'pocket boroughs' were controlled by one family and 'rotten boroughs' had hardly any voters. Jews returned to London in 1656, and Protestant Huguenot refugees came from France between 1680 and 1720.

Queen Anne had no surviving children, so in 1707 the Act of Union (Treaty of Union in Scotland) created the Kingdom of Great Britain; Scotland kept its own legal system, education system and Presbyterian Church. In 1714 Parliament chose the German George I as king; because he relied on his ministers, the leading minister became known as Prime Minister — the first was Sir Robert Walpole (1721–42). In 1745 Bonnie Prince Charlie (Charles Edward Stuart) led a Highland rising but was defeated at Culloden in 1746; the Highland Clearances later forced many Scots to emigrate. Robert Burns wrote Auld Lang Syne. The 18th-century Enlightenment brought thinkers such as Adam Smith (economics) and David Hume (philosophy), and James Watt's work on steam power.

Before the 18th century most people worked in farming or cottage industries. The Industrial Revolution of the 18th and 19th centuries made Britain the first country to industrialise on a large scale, thanks to machinery and steam power. Coal was needed for the new factories, people moved to towns, and the Bessemer process for mass-producing steel boosted shipbuilding and railways. Richard Arkwright improved the carding machine, used horse-driven and then steam-powered mills, and ran famously efficient factories. Canals linked factories to towns and ports. Working conditions were very poor, with long hours and child labour.

Overseas, Captain James Cook mapped the coast of Australia, Britain gained control of Canada, and the East India Company took over large parts of India. Sake Dean Mahomet opened the first curry house in Britain in 1810 and introduced 'shampooing' (Indian head massage). Prosperity was partly built on the slave trade, which carried Africans in terrible conditions to plantations in America and the Caribbean. The Quakers set up the first anti-slavery groups, and William Wilberforce helped change public opinion. Trading slaves on British ships or from British ports was banned in 1807, and the Emancipation Act of 1833 abolished slavery throughout the British Empire. Afterwards about 2 million Indian and Chinese workers were employed to replace freed slaves.

By the 1760s the wealthy North American colonies largely ran their own affairs. When Britain tried to tax them, colonists protested 'no taxation without representation'. Fighting broke out, and in 1776 thirteen colonies declared independence; Britain recognised it in 1783.

Britain fought several wars with France. After the French Revolution of 1789, the new government and then the Emperor Napoleon went to war with Britain. Admiral Nelson's fleet beat the French and Spanish at the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805, but Nelson was killed — Nelson's Column in Trafalgar Square commemorates him and his ship HMS Victory can be visited in Portsmouth. In 1815 the Duke of Wellington, 'the Iron Duke' and later Prime Minister, defeated Napoleon at Waterloo. In 1801, after the Act of Union of 1800, Ireland joined Great Britain to form the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. The Union Flag (Union Jack) combines the crosses of St George (England: red cross on white), St Andrew (Scotland: diagonal white cross on blue) and St Patrick (Ireland: diagonal red cross on white). Wales's dragon is not on it because Wales was already united with England when the first Union Flag was created in 1606.

Queen Victoria came to the throne in 1837 aged 18 and reigned until 1901, almost 64 years. Britain's power grew abroad, the middle classes became more important, and reformers worked to improve life for the poor. The British Empire came to cover India, Australia and much of Africa — the largest empire the world has seen, with over 400 million people. About 13 million Britons emigrated between 1853 and 1913, while around 120,000 Russian and Polish Jews came to Britain between 1870 and 1914 to escape persecution.

Britain moved towards free trade, repealing the Corn Laws in 1846, and in 1847 women's and children's working hours were limited to 10 a day. George and Robert Stephenson pioneered the railway engine, and Isambard Kingdom Brunel built the Great Western Railway and bridges such as the Clifton Suspension Bridge. The 1851 Great Exhibition in the Crystal Palace in Hyde Park showed off mostly British goods. In the Crimean War (1853–56) Britain fought with Turkey and France against Russia; Victoria introduced the Victoria Cross for valour, and Florence Nightingale improved hospital conditions and later founded nurse training at St Thomas' Hospital — she is seen as the founder of modern nursing. In Ireland the potato crop failed, a famine killed a million people and 1.5 million left; nationalists split between the Fenians (full independence) and Charles Stuart Parnell (Home Rule).

As industrial towns grew, the middle classes demanded political power. The Reform Act of 1832 greatly increased the number of voters, abolished pocket and rotten boroughs and gave more seats to towns and cities, but voting still depended on owning property. The Chartists campaigned for working people to have the vote; the Reform Act of 1867 created more urban seats and lowered the property requirement, though most men and all women still could not vote. Political parties began organising to reach ordinary voters.

Until 1870 a married woman's money and property belonged to her husband; Acts of 1870 and 1882 changed this. Women campaigning for the vote became known as suffragettes. Emmeline Pankhurst set up the Women's Franchise League in 1889 and helped found the Women's Social and Political Union in 1903, whose members used civil disobedience and hunger strikes. In 1918 women over 30 won the vote and the right to stand for Parliament; in 1928 women could vote at 21, the same as men. Debate grew about the Empire: the Boer War of 1899–1902 against Dutch settlers in South Africa made people question it, and in the 20th century there was a mostly orderly move from Empire to Commonwealth. Rudyard Kipling, born in India, wrote the Just So Stories, The Jungle Book and the poem If, and won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1907.

The early 20th century was a time of optimism and social progress: help for the unemployed, old-age pensions, free school meals, safer workplaces, stricter town planning and, for the first time, a salary for MPs. It ended when the First World War (1914–18) broke out, triggered by the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria on 28 June 1914 but also caused by nationalism, militarism, imperialism and rival alliances. Britain was one of the Allied Powers with France, Russia, Japan, Belgium, Serbia and later Greece, Italy, Romania and the USA, against the Central Powers — mainly Germany, Austria-Hungary, the Ottoman Empire and later Bulgaria. The whole Empire took part; more than a million Indians fought for Britain. There were more than 2 million British casualties, and the attack on the Somme in July 1916 caused about 60,000 on the first day alone. The war ended at 11.00 am on 11 November 1918 with victory for Britain and its allies.

In 1913 the government promised Irish 'Home Rule', opposed by Protestants in the north. The war postponed it, and in 1916 Irish nationalists launched the Easter Rising in Dublin; its leaders were executed and a guerrilla war followed. A peace treaty in 1921 led in 1922 to partition: six mainly Protestant northern counties stayed in the UK as Northern Ireland, and the rest became the Irish Free State, a republic from 1949. Conflict between those wanting a united independent Ireland and those loyal to Britain is known as 'the Troubles'.

The 1920s brought better housing, but in 1929 the world entered the Great Depression and parts of the UK suffered mass unemployment. Heavy industries like shipbuilding suffered while car and aviation industries grew; car ownership doubled from 1 to 2 million between 1930 and 1939. John Maynard Keynes published new economic theories, and the BBC began radio broadcasts in 1922 and the world's first regular television service in 1936.

Adolf Hitler took power in Germany in 1933. When he invaded Poland in 1939, Britain and France declared war on the Axis powers (Germany, Italy and Japan). As France fell in 1940, Winston Churchill became Prime Minister. Civilian boats helped rescue more than 300,000 men from Dunkirk ('the Dunkirk spirit'). In summer 1940 the RAF, flying Spitfires and Hurricanes, won the Battle of Britain, but German night bombing — the Blitz — devastated Coventry and London's East End ('the Blitz spirit'). Japan took Singapore and Burma, and the USA joined after Pearl Harbour in December 1941. On D-Day, 6 June 1944, the Allies landed in Normandy; Germany was defeated in May 1945, and Japan surrendered in August 1945 after atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki — Ernest Rutherford's team had been first to 'split the atom'. Alexander Fleming discovered penicillin in 1928, later developed into a usable drug by Florey and Chain.

In 1945 voters elected a Labour government under Clement Attlee, which built the welfare state set out in William Beveridge's report (tackling the 'Giant Evils' of Want, Disease, Ignorance, Squalor and Idleness). In 1948 Health Minister Aneurin (Nye) Bevan led the creation of the National Health Service, free at the point of use; railways, coal, gas, water and electricity were nationalised. R A Butler's Education Act 1944 had introduced free secondary education. India, Pakistan and Ceylon became independent in 1947, the UK built its own atomic bomb and joined NATO, and Harold Macmillan spoke of a 'wind of change' in the Empire. Labour shortages led to workers being recruited from Ireland, Europe, the West Indies, India, Pakistan and later Bangladesh. The 1960s — 'the Swinging Sixties' — brought The Beatles and The Rolling Stones, liberalised divorce and abortion laws, and equal pay for women; immigration rules were then tightened, though 28,000 people of Indian origin expelled from Uganda were admitted in the early 1970s.

The late 1970s saw economic trouble, strikes and violence in Northern Ireland, which was ruled directly from London from 1972. The UK joined the European Economic Community in 1973. Margaret Thatcher, the first woman Prime Minister (1979–90), privatised industries, limited trade union power and sent a taskforce that recovered the Falkland Islands after Argentina invaded in 1982. John Major helped start the Northern Ireland peace process. Tony Blair's Labour government (from 1997) created the Scottish Parliament and Welsh Assembly, and the Good Friday Agreement was signed in 1998; Gordon Brown followed in 2007. British forces fought in Kuwait, the former Yugoslavia, Afghanistan and Iraq. In 2010 no party won a majority, and the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats formed a coalition with David Cameron as Prime Minister.

Britain gave the 20th century many inventions. Scotsman John Logie Baird developed the television in the 1920s and made the first broadcast between London and Glasgow in 1932. Scotsman Sir Robert Watson-Watt developed radar (first successful test in 1935), and Sir Bernard Lovell's radio telescope at Jodrell Bank in Cheshire was for years the biggest in the world. Alan Turing's theoretical Turing machine (1930s) shaped computer science. Scottish physician John MacLeod co-discovered insulin; the structure of DNA was discovered in 1953 at British universities in London and Cambridge (Francis Crick shared the Nobel Prize).

Sir Frank Whittle developed the jet engine in the 1930s and Sir Christopher Cockerell invented the hovercraft in the 1950s. Britain and France built Concorde, the only supersonic passenger aircraft (first flight 1969, retired 2003), and Britain designed the Harrier jump jet that takes off vertically. James Goodfellow invented the cash machine (ATM); the first opened at Barclays in Enfield in 1967. IVF was pioneered by Sir Robert Edwards and Patrick Steptoe — the first 'test-tube baby' was born in Oldham in 1978. In 1996 Sir Ian Wilmot and Keith Campbell cloned Dolly the sheep. Sir Peter Mansfield co-invented the MRI scanner, and Sir Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web — information first passed over it on 25 December 1990. You do not need to remember inventors' dates of birth and death.